WHY STRONG MATH INSTRUCTION MATTERS FOR STUDENTS

All of mathematics depends on what kids do in the elementary grades. If you don't do it right, you're doing remedial work all the way up to college. Arithmetic, algebra and geometry are intertwined".Maria Glod, Washington Post Elementary Math Grows Exponentially Tougher

for path-changing outcomes.

The story of a 5th grade classroom in Mexico, led by a young educator named Juárez Correa. Correa created an inquiry-based, student-led environment that positioned his students to score in top rankings for math and language assessments in Mexico (for the very first time) and redefined how they experienced school.

“The dominant model of public education is still fundamentally rooted in the industrial revolution that spawned it, when workplaces valued punctuality, regularity, attention, and silence above all else. (In 1899, William T. Harris, the US commissioner of education, celebrated the fact that US schools had developed the “appearance of a machine,” one that teaches the student “to behave in an orderly manner, to stay in his own place, and not get in the way of others.”) We don’t openly profess those values nowadays, but our educational system—which routinely tests kids on their ability to recall information and demonstrate mastery of a narrow set of skills—doubles down on the view that students are material to be processed, programmed, and quality-tested.”

Teaching Kids Why Math Matters"A person's success in life depends on how well she can solve problems. No matter what her career or life situation, she’ll find satisfaction and reward by knowing how to tackle challenges head on. And while kids can’t possibly practice every problem they’ll ever have in life, there is a class in school that can help them learn how to think logically: math." http://www.education.com/magazine/article/math-matters/

American proficiency levels in math leave a lot to be desired. "What about our brightest? It turns out that only 7 percent of U.S. students perform at an advanced level in math. Forty-five percent of the students in Shanghai are advanced in math, compared with 20 percent in South Korea and Switzerland and 15 percent of students in Japan, Belgium, Finland, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Canada."http://washingtonexaminer.com/why-math-matters-a-lot/article/299511#.UQLbEL_Affc

for social justice and equity.

The social injustices of past schooling practices can no longer be tolerated. Mathematics has become a critical filter for employment and full participation in our society. We cannot afford to have the majority of our population mathematically illiterate: Equity has become an economic necessity. National Council of Teachers of Mathematics

Begun in 1982, the Algebra Project is transforming math education in twenty-five cities. Founded on the belief that math-science literacy is a prerequisite for full citizenship in society, the Project works with entire communities-parents, teachers, and especially students-to create a culture of literacy around algebra, a crucial stepping-stone to college math and opportunity.

I believe that the absence of math literacy in urban and rural communities throughout this country is an issue as urgent as the lack of registered voters in Mississippi was in 1961.-Robert P. Moses

Differential access to algebra in today’s public schools, Moses and Cobb argue, should be understood as a structural form of discrimination that strongly resembles how access to textual literacy was used to exclude African Americans from political and economic life during the 1960s. – Rogers Hall, University of California, Berkeley, 1999

Moses outlines the transformation of our nation from an industrially driven economy to a technologically driven one. He argues that this transformation has imposed new requirements on our educational system and has made math illiteracy -once acceptable- no longer tolerable. Illiteracy in mathematics, he argues, cripples a persons’ opportunities for the most basic of all career opportunities. - Dr. Joi Spencer, University of San Diego